The significance of data on the use of machinery in agriculture is ordinarily not sufficiently appreciated in economic literature. First, the capitalist character of machinery use is ignored time and again (always, when it comes to bourgeois economists), the corresponding question is not investigated, and they are either unable or unwilling even to pose it. Second, the use of machinery is examined in isolation, rather than as an indicator of different types of economic organization, different methods of cultivation, different economic conditions of production.

If we observe, as a general rule, incomparably greater use of machinery in large-scale production compared with small-scale production, and an enormous concentration of machinery in capitalist enterprises, and sometimes even an almost monopolization of improved implements by capitalist enterprises, then this points to the difference in land management in enterprises of different types. Among the machines registered by the German census are such as steam ploughs, seed drills, potato-planting machines. Their use predominantly in capitalist agriculture means that here land management is better, the technique of cultivation is superior, the productivity of labor is greater. The author of the well-known monograph on agricultural machinery, Benzing{123}, calculated, relying on data from specialists on the practical experience of applying different machines, that even without changing systems of field rotation, the use of machinery, considered separately, increases the net profitability of an enterprise tenfold. These calculations have been refuted by no one and cannot be, in their essence, refuted.

The small producer, lacking the possibility of applying improved implements, is forced to fall behind in land management, and "catch up" with the large operator only through investing greater labor in the land while preserving old implements, through increasing "diligence" and lengthening the working day—a possibility available to only units and tens out of hundreds and thousands. Statistics on machinery use thus point precisely to that fact of excessive labor in small-scale production which (fact) Marxists have always emphasized. No statistics will be able to directly account for this fact, but if we look at statistical data in their economic significance, it will become clear what types of enterprises must develop, cannot help but develop, in modern society with the use of machinery and with the impossibility of using it.

An illustration of what has been said is provided by Hungarian statistics. Like the German census of 1907 (as well as 1882 and 1895), like Danish statistics on machinery use in 1907, like the French inquiry of 1909, the Hungarian census of 1895, the first to gather precise data for the entire country, shows the superiority of capitalist agriculture, an increase in the percentage of enterprises with machinery as the size of enterprises grows. From this side, there is nothing new here, but merely a confirmation of German data. But the peculiarity of Hungarian statistics is that information was collected not only on a few improved implements and machines, but on all, or almost all, dead inventory—on the number of the simplest and most necessary implements: ploughs, harrows, carts, and so forth.

Thanks to such exceptionally detailed data, it becomes possible to establish with precision the indicative, so to speak, characterizing the entire structure of production, significance of information on the use of a few agricultural machines and "rarities" of technique (such as steam ploughs). Let us take data from Hungarian statistics{58} on the use of ploughs other than steam ploughs (of which there were in 1895 only 179 in all of Hungary, of which 120 were in the 3,977 largest enterprises).

Here is data on the total number of ploughs and on the number of the simplest, most primitive, least durable of all implements of this kind (the simplest are classified as single-furrow ploughs with wooden shafts; the others: the same with iron shafts, then two- and three-furrow ploughs, cultivators, ridgers, deep-ploughing ploughs).

Without even mentioning dwarf enterprises, we see that among small peasant holdings (5–10 joches, i.e., 2.8–5.7 ha), 233 thousand out of 569 thousand have no ploughs at all; among middle peasant holdings, 69 thousand out of 467 thousand. Only the highest groups—i.e., large peasant and capitalist enterprises—are equipped with ploughs, and only in enterprises exceeding 100 joches (such enterprises number only 25 thousand = 0.9% of the total!) do improved implements predominate. In peasant enterprises the simplest implements predominate (and the smaller the enterprise, the more marked this predominance), implements that are least durable and give the worst results.

Setting aside dwarf enterprises, which constitute the majority (52%) of all enterprises but occupy a negligible share of land (7%), we arrive at the following conclusion:

Over a million small- and middle-peasant enterprises (5–20 joches) are insufficiently equipped even with the simplest implements for soil cultivation.

A quarter-million large peasant enterprises (20–100 joches) are adequately equipped with implements of the simplest kind. And only 25 thousand capitalist enterprises (which, it is true, have 55% of all land area) are fully equipped with improved implements.

On the other hand, Hungarian statistics calculates how many joches of arable land fall per agricultural implement and obtains the following figures (we shall cite data only on ploughs, harrows, and carts, with the caveat that the picture of their distribution among enterprises is entirely uniform with what we saw regarding ploughs).

This means that, wretchedly equipped with all agricultural implements, proletarian and peasant enterprises possess them excessively compared with the total quantity of arable land in their enterprises. Wretched provision of implements and unbearable costliness of their maintenance—such is the lot of small-scale production under capitalism. In exactly the same way, statistics on dwellings in every large city would show us that the lowest classes of the population—workers, petty traders, minor clerks, and so forth—live worst of all, have the smallest and most miserable apartments, and pay most for every cubic foot. Calculated per unit of space, the dormitory of a factory barracks or any slum for the poor is more expensive than luxurious apartments somewhere on the Nevsky.

From this follows, in relation to Germany and in relation to all capitalist countries, the following conclusion. If data on the use of a few improved implements and agricultural machines show us that their use grows with the size of enterprises, then this means that small-scale production in agriculture is poorly equipped with all necessary implements. This means that in small-scale production there is combined the squandering of labor on maintaining an immense mass of poor and obsolete implements, suitable only for minute enterprises, and grievous want, forcing the peasant to strain himself to barely hold on with these obsolete, barbarous implements on his scrap of land.

This is what these so simple and so familiar to all data on the use of agricultural machinery tell us if we ponder the socio-economic significance of these data.

Capitalism raises the technique of agriculture and moves it forward, but it cannot do this otherwise than by ruining, debasing, and crushing the mass of small producers.

To illustrate vividly the social significance and tempo of this process, let us compare in conclusion data from three German censuses—1882, 1895, and 1907. For such a comparison, we must take data on the number of instances of use of those five agricultural machines which were registered throughout this entire period (these machines are: steam ploughs, seed drills, reapers and binders, steam and other threshers). We obtain the following picture:

Progress seems considerable: over a quarter-century the number of instances of use of the principal machines increased, on the whole, almost fourfold. But, looking more carefully, we must say: it took a full quarter-century to make the use of even one of the five principal machines a customary phenomenon among a small minority of enterprises that do not do without the constant use of hired labor. For customary use can only be called such use when the number of instances of it exceeds the number of enterprises, and this we see only in relation to capitalist and large peasant enterprises. Taken together, they constitute 12% of the total number of enterprises.

The mass of small and middle peasants, after a quarter-century of capitalist progress, remained in such a position that only one-third of the former and two-thirds of the latter can make use during the year of any of these five machines.

(End of 1st article.)